"In October 2008 The Impossible Project saved the last Polaroid production plant for integral instant film in Enschede (NL) and started to invent and produce totally new instant film materials for traditional Polaroid cameras. In 2010 Impossible saved analog instant photography from extinction by releasing various, brand new and unique instant films."

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"The Knowledge Bank provides access to e–learning materials specific to the textile industry. The subjects cover knitting technology, clothing technology, medical textiles, equal opportunities and the role of textiles in the global economy. The content is freely available to companies and individuals"

(William Lee Innovation Centre, Textiles and Paper, School of Materials, The University of Manchester, 2007)

nb. this project was previously located here: http://www.knitepedia.co.uk

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"I have questions that do not occur in words: questions about space, about material moving in space, and about the intermingling of space and object. I feel that space disguises itself and its nature by its transparency. It is, strangely, this very transparency that makes space opaque to our awareness. This new work uses skinny lines moving in space. Emptying out the volume reduces the visual mass so that more of the space around the work gets implicated in what the work finally is. The space shares in creating, or manifesting, the function of the work itself. This emptying–out of the mass makes it possible to imbue space without occupying space."

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"Techne is a name both for the activities and skills of a craftsman and for the arts of both mind and hand, but is also linked to creative making, poiesis. Poiesis is normally translated as 'making', but Heidegger interprets poiesis as 'bringing–forth' (Her–vor–bringen), creation. An apple tree 'brings–forth' its fruits as a silversmith 'brings–forth' a chalice. In this sense of poiesis, there is a deep commonality between natural production and human production in that they both bring–forth whether by making or by growing. Physis, the arising of something from out of itself, is a bringing–forth, poiesis. Physis is indeed poiesis in the highest sense. Physis, often translated as 'nature', signifies not simply geological or biological processes, but the Being of all beings. Techne is a mode of poiesis in the extended sense which Heidegger attributes to poiesis. This means that both humans and nature bring–forth their products. They differ only in that nature brings–forth itself whereas humans bring–forth from another. In the ancient world natural production is the primary sense of production, human production is derivative from it, or, as the usual translation has it, 'art imitates nature'. In the modern world human making is primary and nature is understood as a self–making. Poiesis is related to that which comes–forth out of its own nature alone and techne is related to that which comes–forth only by our intervention in that nature.

Heidegger illuminates techne in describing the cabinetmaker's work. A cabinetmaker is not merely skilled in using his tools. His craft lies in his ability to understand different kinds of wood and the shapes slumbering within wood. He is not related to his materials in the way of the industrial machine operator who uses the raw materials. The craftsman has a feel for his materials, he has become part of them. The handling of the wood is not a mere manipulation of it, but proceeds with a sensitive, firm touch which assists the wood in becoming the cabinet. The cabinetmaker's role is something like that of a midwife. In the techne of the craftsman there is a releasement toward things. Here we see that letting–be means neither passivity nor domination. When techne becomes technique, the attitude of 'letting–be' loses its priority over 'making–be' and craft becomes domination. In this process work changes its character.

The artist's work differs from the cabinetmaker's work, though they both have techne. The creation of an artwork requires craftsmanship. In fabricating equipment, the cabinet, material, wood is used, and used up. It disappears into its usefulness. The material is all the better and more suitable the less it resists perishing in the equipmental being of the equipment. The sculptor uses stone just as the mason uses it, in his own way, but the sculptor does not use it up. The artist is a handiworker who knows how the material behaves, but he lets come what is already coming to presence."